The Principles of Management course involves reading ten articles from the Harvard Business Review. The first is from 1990 and is titled, "The Manager's Job: Folklore and Fact."
Let me just say that I think the ten roles of managers in this article is gold.
1. The article starts with mention of Henri Fayol's 1916 classic four tasks of management: plan, organize, coordinate, and control. As seen in the previous post, this is the "internal process" model of management. Minzberg gives examples that don't fit Fayol's outline, namely, tasks involving improvisation (open systems model) and relationship (human relations model).
Managers don't always know what it is that they do. Mintzberg aims to describe the manager's job on the basis of research on how real managers actually spend their time.
Four Myths about the Manager's Job
a. Managers are reflective, systematic planners.
In reality, managers work constantly in ways characterized by brevity, variety, and discontinuity. They are action oriented and tend to dislike reflective activities. "A manager is always plagued by the possibilities of what might be done and what must be done" (164). Managers tend to plan in the context of daily actions.
b. The effective manager has no regular duties to perform.
The reality is that managers are often involved in ritual duties. They are not orchestra conductors but regular participants in the action as needed. They often see customers, gather "soft" external information, substitute in more routine places.
c. The senior manager needs aggregated information, probably from some "management information system" (MIS) or "total information system."
In reality, in 1990, managers favored verbal media, telephone calls, and meetings over documents. "Today's gossip may be tomorrow's fact -- that's why managers cherish hearsay" (166). I sense that email and the data dashboards of this time significantly have modified this dynamic. Big data is all the rage right now. Whether it is as effective as everyone seems to think, however, is another question.
Two of the prime uses of information are 1) identify problems and opportunities and 2) build mental models. Mintzberg argues that in 1990, managers tended to do these tasks based on tidbits of information rather than some total information system. This fact may have changed.
However, I personally do not yet know of a MIS that makes decisions mechanical for a team of wise and creative individuals. Although I am crazy about the data science program at Houghton, I know enough about the black swan dynamic to think someone is going to come along with some serious words to say about it.
Richard Neustadt suggested that Eisenhauer, Roosevelt, and Truman made decisions not on "bland amalgams" of data but by "the odds and ends of tangible detail that pieced together in his mind" (166). "To help himself he must reach out as widely as he can for every scrap of fact, opinion, gossip, bearing on his interests and relationships as President."
Two important points: 1) verbal information is stored in brains--"The strategic data bank of the organization is not in the memory of its computers but in the minds of its managers" and 2) this explains a reluctance to delegate on the part of managers. I hear him, but some of this may be dated.
d. Management is quickly becoming a science and profession.
In 1990, management still involved a lot of judgment and intuition. I imagine it still does.
2. There's a side-box about how to research managerial work. Sune Carlson investigated managerial work in Sweden by having managers keep diaries of their daily work. Richard Neustadt analyzed the behavior of US Presidents in Presidential Power.
3. Defining the manager's job.
Who is the manager? A manager is "that person in charge of an organization or subunit" (168). They all have a certain "formal authority" to make certain decisions. From his research, Mintzberg identified ten roles a manager plays that can be grouped into three categories: interpersonal, informational, and decisional.
Interpersonal Roles
The three interpersonal roles of a manager are 1) as a figurehead, 2) as a leader, and 3) as a liaison.
As figurehead, the manager performs certain ceremonial duties (retirements, welcoming, statements). The leadership role can involve hiring and training. Of course we have witnessed a mountain of leadership material these last thirty years. I was generally trained to think of leadership as the highest task and that managerial functions are subordinate to it.
"The influence of managers is most clearly seen in the leader role. Formal authority vests them with great potential power; leadership determines in large part how much of it they will realize" (168).
The "liaison" role has to do with contacts outside the vertical chain of command. Managers in the past have spent much less time with their superiors than with their subordinates, and about as much time with peers as with their subordinates.
Informational Roles
Mintzberg describes three informational roles: 1) monitor, 2) disseminator, and 3) spokesperson.
"Managers don't leave meetings or hang up the telephone to get back to work. In large part, communication is their work" (169).
As monitor, the manager is constantly scanning the environment for information. As disseminator, the manager passes information on to subordinates and the organization. As spokesperson, the manager speaks to those outside the organization.
In a sidebox, Mintzberg notes that his article was only balancing out the managerial equation. Planning, organizing, coordinating, and controlling are part of the manager's job. But these are cerebral functions. There are also the insightful functions that involve commitment and integrity. "In practice, management has to be two-faced--there has to be a balance between the cerebral and the insightful" (170).
"No job is more vital to our society than that of the manager. It is the manager who determines whether our social institutions serve us well or whether they squander our talents and resources" (175).
Decisional
The four roles of the manager in relation to decisions are 1) entrepreneur, 2) disturbance handler, 3) resource allocator, and 4) negotiator.
If the manager is constantly monitoring new things in the environment, this information can lead to innovation. "Chief executives appear to maintain a kind of inventory of the development projects in various stages of development. Like jugglers, they keep a number of projects in the air" (171). This is the manager as entrepreneur.
The manager also has to respond to pressures and change outside his or her control. They become a disturbance handler. "Every manager must spend a considerable amount of time responding to high-pressure disturbances" (172).
The third decision role is that of resource allocator. "The scarcest resource managers have to allocate is their own time" (172). The manager may determine a unit's structure. The manager may authorize important decisions before they are implemented. "Few CEOs approve a proposal -- they approve a person" (171).
A final role is that of negotiator. E.g., to get a hire the manager may have to negotiate.
The ten roles come together into a gestalt. Different types of managers may lean toward one or the other categories. For example, sales managers lean toward the interpersonal. Production managers lean toward the decisional. Staff managers lean toward the informational.
4. Effective Management
"The manager's effectiveness is significantly influenced by their insight into their own work" (173). "Managers who can be introspective about about their work are likely to be effective at their jobs."
Three areas of concern: 1) a lack of delegation, 2) all the information in the manager's head, and 3) working with "management scientists."
a. The manager needs to share privileged information with the right people. Regular meetings with key people are important. "The time spent disseminating this information will be more than regained when decisions must be made" (173). [A special kind of information that needs to be written down somewhere is institutional memory.]
b. The "planning dilemma" is the need for the manager to communicate with the data specialists, and for the data specialists to give to the manager the right kind of information.
c. Turn obligations into advantages and desires into obligations. "Unsuccessful managers blame failures on obligations. Effective managers turn obligations to advantages" (175). Then "the manager frees some time to do the things that he or she -- perhaps no one else -- thinks important by turning them into obligations. Free time is made, not found."
5. Training
"You can't teach swimming or management in a lecture hall." "We are taught a skill by practice plus feedback."
6. Self-Study Questions for Managers:
- Where do I get my information?
- What information do I share?
- Do I tend to act before I have enough information?
- Do I know enough to make judgments on subordinate's proposals?
- What is my vision for the organization?
- How do my subordinates react to my management style?
- What are my external relationships?
- Do I have a system of time management?
- Do I overwork?
- Am I becoming superficial?
- How do I use media?
- How do I blend my rights and duties?
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